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 * Copyright © 2019 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Didn&apos;t listen',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/04/13.jpg" alt="The parking lot outside my workplace" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed that I awoke in the middle of the night to strange laughter.
		As I went to investigate, I had to pass by a mirror.
		It looked like someone without good photo-editing skills had $a[GIMP]ed an old person&apos;s face over my own.
		The laughing went away, and I heard a recording of me struggling, which I somehow knew was coming from my camera in the other room.
		When I went to check what was going on, I found my camera on top of a dresser with a book balanced on top of it.
		The book fell off as I drew near.
		I woke up before I could take a look at the video that the camera was playing though.
		I awoke feeling very creeped out.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion posts for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Which is better for today&apos;s technical landscape?
			Well, that questions assumes one of the two actually <strong>*is*</strong> better.
			As an analogy, which tool is better in today&apos;s architecture landscape, a saw or a hammer?
			I don&apos;t have enough experience with databases to say for sure that they both have their places, but I&apos;m guessing that they do.
			As the reading material suggested, the three-tier system works great on the Web.
			The obvious reason being that the Web browser can act as the client and no special purpose-specific application need be downloaded by the user.
			There&apos;s also the fact that the client doesn&apos;t need direct access to the database, which means that the client doesn&apos;t need to be trusted.
			On a system that&apos;s open to the public, such as a system made available over the Web.
			Clearly, there&apos;s a strong need for three-tier database applications in the modern world.
		</p>
		<p>
			However, I have zero experience with two-tier database applications.
			I tried to come up with examples of two-tier set-ups, but I couldn&apos;t come up with a single real-world example.
			I don&apos;t know what they can be used for.
			All I know is that the client has to be trusted, as they can access and modify the database at will, and the client also needs to have the application logic on their end, meaning that they&apos;ve got to install the application locally and deal with installing any updates they need.
			It&apos;s early in the week though, and I haven&apos;t had time to get through all the reading material yet.
			I&apos;m hoping the textbook presents examples, so I can better understand what the two-tier architecture can be used for.
			<span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> brought up a good point about the two-tier setup being faster in terms of time spent communicating between machines though.
			I&apos;m not sure if that&apos;s the only benefit, but it&apos;s something that could be important to some use cases.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			You make a good point that the two-tier setup would be faster in terms of communication time.
			Instead of two channels of communication in place like the three-tier setup, the two-tier setup has only one communication channel needed.
			I feel like in some cases though, the three-tier setup could actually optimise communication better than the two-tier setup.
			For example, if the client sends minimal requests to the application server and receives minimal responses, it might speed things up in cases in which lots of data needs to be read and/or written to the database, the database server is on the same $a[LAN] as the application server, and the client doesn&apos;t actually need access to most of the data processed for the requests.
			It&apos;s an odd corner case though, and in most cases, I think you&apos;re right that the two-tier setup would be faster.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="corporate">
	<h2>Corporate</h2>
	<p>
		I learned today that we only have headsets for our drive-through because corporate required us to get them.
		(We&apos;re a franchise.)
		Wow.
		The owner, who had to pay for them, didn&apos;t even want them.
		I just assumed it was the owner&apos;s choice.
		I mean, corporate doesn&apos;t even require that we <strong>*have*</strong> a drive-through.
		No other store in our chain that I&apos;ve seen does, and I&apos;ve had numerous customers tell me that they love our location because they too haven&apos;t seen any others that have one.
		Clearly, having a drive-through isn&apos;t one of the mandates we follow.
		So why would I think corporate was meddling with the drive-through after over a decade of leaving well enough alone?
		It turns out corporate made a deal with the headset company, so now they require that if a location has a drive-through, they&apos;ve got to purchase headsets from this company.
	</p>
	<p>
		It explains a lot, actually.
		Like, why do we have the headsets at all?
		First of all, we used to have a tube-operated drive-through bell instead, and the drive-through worker would need to walk to the window whenever the bell went off.
		It was so ghetto, just like the rest of the store.
		It would be completely random for the owner to suddenly decide we needed headsets and a working menu board speaker, and doesn&apos;t match how they run the rest of the store.
		They prefer to leave us with the bare minimum in an effort to cut costs in the short term, often ignoring the long term in the process.
		But secondly, what point is there in the headset setup without a second person working the drive-through?
		With two people, one can ring in the order of the customer at the board while the second completes the sale at the window.
		A two-person setup with the headsets (or with a second window) would speed up the drive-through line.
		Instead though, we take orders at the board, the customer comes up to the window, we tell the next customer that has now cum up to the board to wait, and we complete the sale at the window.
		Customers still have to wait until the people ahead of them are completely and totally done.
		Honestly, when the headsets aren&apos;t providing completely garbled sound quality so I can&apos;t make out what customers are after, they allow me to talk to the customer while checking things for them.
		For example, if they ask if we have something, I don&apos;t leave them at the window and come back with an answer.
		Instead, I leave them at the board, then tell them the answer as soon as I&apos;ve walked over and gotten it.
		They don&apos;t need to wait for me to walk back to the window.
		Clearly, they have some value.
		But between the garbled sound quality and the fact that they aren&apos;t facilitating a way to serve two customers at once like at more-professional drive-through lanes, they don&apos;t seem worth whatever it cost to get the headset system (including menu board speaker and subterranean car detectors) up and running.
	</p>
	<p>
		Wow.
		Just wow.
		The franchise owner&apos;s in deep with corporate, and pretty much has to lick their boots for them.
		I&apos;ve mentioned that corporate demanded we install a new computerised system that doesn&apos;t even work correctly much of the time in the past.
		I haven&apos;t mentioned it, but they also required us to install a major hardware upgrade later too, which our customers don&apos;t use nearly enough.
		I&apos;m not even sure the thing is worth the electricity it takes to power it.
		I wonder how much else the owner&apos;s been having to buy just so corporate can make more money off us.
		Honestly, I&apos;d feel bad for the owner if they hadn&apos;t proven time and time again how toxic they are.
		They probably deserve this.
		However, corporate doesn&apos;t deserve what they&apos;re draining from our franchise owner, nor from all the other franchise owners under their thumb.
		This is just ridiculous.
	</p>
	<p>
		Speaking of corporate forcibly selling us things we don&apos;t want or need, we&apos;re back to not using the barcode system we paid so much for.
		Why?
		Well, because it tries to force us to do things the exact opposite of the way the head manager here wants to run things.
		And honestly, I&apos;m on the head manager&apos;s side on this one.
		I&apos;d prefer not to get into details on this because of privileged information and such, but suffice it to say, the barcode system is a waste of time for us and a waste of paper for any location that uses it.
		It&apos;s not something we derive any benefit from whatsoever.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="lock">
	<h2>Bike lock issues</h2>
	<p>
		My bike lock jammed up again today.
		I don&apos;t feel like I was as rough with the key as it should be able to take, but then again, it doesn&apos;t have any metal in the loop of the key and the loop had already broken just by <strong>*dropping*</strong> my keyring on the ground with that key attached.
		I mentioned gluing the key back together in a past journal entry, and since then, the glue broke in my pocket and I had to glue the key back together a second time.
		So the key was already weak, but also was weakened further.
		I was a little rough with it as my frustration grew, and I broke the loop off the key entirely.
	</p>
	<p>
		With how stuck the lock was, I figured I&apos;d take it back to the bike shop to get lubricated again.
		I guess the lock&apos;s been sticking a little lately, but nowhere near this bad, so I didn&apos;t realise the problem was so close at hand again.
		And now it&apos;s too late to save my key.
		I&apos;ve glued it back together again, but being held only by glue now on both sides of the loop, it&apos;s going to come apart again soon.
		I&apos;m unsure of what I can do going out.
		I guess if I buy a drill, I might be able to put a new hole through the plastic, but it&apos;d be a balancing act of trying to make the hole big enough to fit a keyring and small enough not to be weak enough to break right away.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, I couldn&apos;t leave my bike at work overnight.
		Last time I left a bike locked up overnight because the lock wouldn&apos;t come off, thieves stole the wheels off of it.
		So I headed back into the building to grab the boss&apos;s pliers.
		The head manager keeps a bag of miscellaneous tools in the back room where I wash the dishes nearly every day, and surely they wouldn&apos;t mind if I borrowed one for a bit to free my bike.
		And surely there&apos;d be pliers in the bag, which would give me better leverage to force the key to move in the lock.
		I&apos;d never really looked in the bag though, and found its contents to be quite sparse.
		There was junk in there, but not really very many tools.
		I did manage to find a strange-looking set of pliers though, or maybe it was a wrench of some sort.
		It was really hard to tell what to classify the thing as, but it might give me the grip I needed to use the thing for leverage, so I tool it out with me.
		The boss also had a couple cans of lubricant.
		The entire problem was that the lock needed lubricant, so maybe this lubricant would free the bike.
		I wasn&apos;t sure it was the right type for the job, but maybe it would help me wiggle the lock loose so I could get it to the bike shop for the right lube.
	</p>
	<p>
		The lube worked surprisingly well.
		I didn&apos;t even end up using the strange pliers/wrench, and I&apos;m not going to need to go to the bike shop later.
	</p>
	<p>
		I guess what I&apos;ve learned is that I need to lubricate the lock on the first signs of it having slight resistance when I turn the key.
		There wasn&apos;t much of an issue, and the thing suddenly jammed up entirely on me.
		I can&apos;t wait as it progressively gets worse, because it&apos;s not guaranteed to behave in such a linear way.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="religion">
	<h2>Religion</h2>
	<p>
		It seems that the missionaries didn&apos;t understand my telling them I couldn&apos;t meet for a while until I get this pay cheque issue sorted out.
		They thought we were meeting today and tried to cancel on me.
		I&apos;d already cancelled on them though, calling off our meetings until I hear back that my pay cheque&apos;s been stopped and will later be reissued.
		I had work this morning, and would have told them I couldn&apos;t meet today, but didn&apos;t as I&apos;d already told them I need a break until the money-related stress is over.
		I didn&apos;t get their message right away as I was at work, then I didn&apos;t exactly check my email until I was about to go to bed, so it was way too late by then.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, they asked if we are still on for Thursday.
		I told them we can meet if they like, but that I still haven&apos;t heard back from the boss about the cheque, so I&apos;ll certainly be distracted and won&apos;t learn much if they come over.
		Honestly, there&apos;s much less communication than there should be at my workplace, and we grunts aren&apos;t really able to speak with the higher-ups to learn what&apos;s going on even with matters that directly relate to us.
		The highest-ranking person I actually have contact with with any level of regularity is the head manager of this particular store location.
		No one representative of the franchise as a whole even makes contact with us grunts.
		Which is fine whenever there aren&apos;t problems, but problems come up often enough.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="sick">
	
	<p>
		I wouldn&apos;t say I&apos;m healthy again, but I&apos;m feeling much better from before, in terms of my illness.
		I felt just terrible before.
		I didn&apos;t even want to leave my home.
	</p>
	<p>
		My leg strength hasn&apos;t returned though.
		That&apos;s going to require further rest to get back.
		That&apos;s what happens when you overexert yourself for two weeks straight.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
